Bird flu, mortality, immortality and related crap

Kastamonu, Samsun, Erzurum... if things were different, I might have been there now: the eye in the storm of a full blown family panic. As it is, I never made it to any of Kastamonu, Samsun, Erzurum.

I am concerned for Turkey and of course for when the jump will be made, but in a very detached sort of way.

I am not concerned about like whether I will get it. I will take my precautions, and if I am to outlive the pandemic, then I outlive the pandemic and tell the tale later. If I am to go in the pandemic in an unmarked mass grave with lime poured on top of me - well, yes, that sucks, but I'll be dead - so no sweat. We all die, you know. Whether we have managed to do all we want to do so that when we go we can feel we have justified our time here is something different completely. We are all dieing. Question is what are we doing about it - not about the fact that we are mortal, about the fact that once we are gone, we are gone. We can't write bullshit 15-syllable poems after death now, can we? We can't draw in chalk and charcoal after death.

We can't - but who is to say that so many of the other pleasures of life are lost? Who is to say that the sunset is lost, or that the crashing of the waves on the rocks is lost and who is to say that the joy to be gained from a nicely stratified and folded piece of limestone is lost? We are part of the natural world and we return to it. While we are alive, our bodies and our humanity prevent us from being one with the rocks, one with the trees, one with the surging sea and one with the stars as they wheel over the earth in their great circles.

"Why would I want to be one with the hermit crab chasing the tidal pools lest it dry in the heat of the sun?" I hear you cry... "Why would I want to be one with the arctic poppy as it twists itself continuously around chasing the never setting sun?"

I need to write more about nature and mans place both within and outside nature. I have no time now. I have a pandemic to panic about.

Venice - Jan 2005 Part V

Next morning - the morning of the Befana we woke a little later than we had wanted and did not make it to the regatta - some other time perhaps. We did manage to pluck up the courage to go to the supermarket, where we got some amazing cheeses and hams for the homemade sandwiches we were intending to eat in the courtyard around the St. Maria of Murano.

We checked out of the Giardinetto and set off with our packed meals for Murano, passing the cemetery island on the way. We did not stop off to look around, although I dare say it will be as impressive and beautiful as our own Proto here in Athens.

An island populated by cypress trees - Venice's cenetery

We ate in the courtyard of the Santa Maria after our visit. Again no photos allowed of the mosaic work, such a disappointment - but definitely worth visiting if one is a fan. Full length theotokos - complete with cross-shadow (if I am not mistaken - it was a year ago). Hmmm I'm confused - why would there be a cross shadow in a church that never had iconoclastic bishops? Very confused. Either there was no cross shadow and I am imagining it, or I am remembering this correctly, in which case, Venice was more under the influence of Constantinople than not. Iconoclasm and the whole cross shadow business is a subject for another time, though. I can't remember where I have seen it most pronounced, but I know I have been there more than once - so probably in St. Sophia itself - or one of the Thessaloniki churches.


The church of Santa Maria in Murano in daylight

On our walk around and some way into the almost frenzy of shopping for glassware, we ran across this chappie in the photo below. He runs a third or fourth generation glass works and happened to be in the place on the Befana public holiday.

Corinna and I had both been to Venice before, at ages near enough the single figures. Both of us recalled very little of our previous visits apart from the very vivid memories of the glass works. This man put on a performance for us, heating and blowing and shaping and spinning the bottle for us - I was surprised to hear the sound the glass makes while red hot is pretty much the same sound it would make when cold when he beat it slightly with his tongs.



We thanked the man for the demonstration and headed back to the Lido to pick up the car. We crossed from the Lido to the ferry port in very dense fog and then crossed the bridge and set off for the other daughter of Constantinople on the Italian Adriatic - Ravenna - some two hours drive to the south.

The fog stayed dense all the way there. We got very lost, not having a decent map of Ravenna, but found the hotel Piccolo, booked through the internet. It was so-so, but cheap and the staff were friendly.

Venice - Jan 2005 Part IV

Well, one year on and so many other journeys to write about as well. The rest of this write up of Venice will be necessarily brief and based around the photographs. After Torcello, we returned to Burano, where every building really is painted a different colour.


Burano - happy colours, fishing town

This gives a very characteristic and happy look to the island. The vaporetto drops you off in front of a rather nice bronze nude and an open space with grass and trees which functions as a park.


In Venice, the canals share traffic signs with normal road systems everywhere…

The sun gets lower over the lagoon - January 5 2005

We walked around the town looking at the lace work and painted houses, stopping for some pastries along our walk. From Burano, we made our way to Murano with the sun hovering on the horizon dangerously close to setting. We walked along the banks of the canals of Murano looking in the windows of the shops and deciding to come in the next day on the vaporetto for a better look.


Corinna and I pose for a timer-shot in central Murano

One of the definite things to come back for was the church of Santa Maria - described as having one of the best full length Byzantine theotokos mosaics ever, and certainly nicely tarted up in full twelfth century brick and masonry extravagance.


The church of Santa Maria in Murano, under night lighting

Resolving to be back the next day for a look inside, we set off for home, the long way round, taking the vaporetto towards the train station and then cruising the grand-canal back towards St. Zaccaria and off to the Lido again.

Venice - Jan 2005 Part III

The plan was for the next day to go pick up some material for packed lunches from a supermarket and head to Torcello. We woke slightly later than planned and went to the nearest supermarket (the one on the same street as the Pizzeria). It had a huge selection of cold meats and cheeses, but something stopped us from trying out our ordering skills and we left with only bottled water. I had recently learned "a half" and was dying to ask for 250 grammes of cheese by asking for a mezzo mezzo. I had to wait for the next day to do this.

The boat to Torcello goes via some part of the lagoon accessible by road from the mainland and then via Burano. Stopping on Burano made us want to explore after Torcello, rather than go straight to Murano and then Venice. So we waited for the Burano to Torcello shuttle with the others and set off for the island which we could see in the misty half-distance. We could make out what we assumed must be the eponymous tower, from Burano, but not much else. I had read that there were essentially two old buildings on the island, one a round church and the older of the two, the other a basilica sort of building with stunning mosaics. There was also the famous "throne of Atilla" a marble throne which was said to have been sat upon by Atilla the Hun when he passed through the area, many centuries before Venice was inhabited. In fact, Torcello has the earliest signs of habitation in the lagoon. Today, the island has about five buildings in total - it seems to be just open land for walking and picnicking and in the half sun and mist we had while there, it was as atmospheric as the guide books describe. From the vaporetto stop, there is a fifteen minute walk to the overpriced museum, opposite which is the square with the two churches.


Corinna sits on "Attila's throne" in front of the two old churches

Round churches usually have a special and significant history, being as they are imitations of the Constantinian and later Justinian church of the holy sepulcher in Jerusalem. This one was rather bland on the inside. The basilica was far more exciting and was one of the big draws of the trip. Inside things to see include, apart from the bones of St. Hippolito (?),two sections of mosaic. The first, is a full standing theotokos in the main apse, the second, on the back wall of the church is a series of bands, of various ages, essentially showing the usual heaven and hell stuff. Obviously the work had been done by craftsmen from the east, or under their guidance.

One section which I found especially disturbing, mainly because I have not seen a parallel elsewhere, was the section with the proud in hell, where there were shown a number of kings and queens and bishops. What's wrong with this? Nothing, in itself. What disturbed me was the fact that the kings and queens were dressed as Byzantine emperors and their empresses, and the bishops were dressed as patriarchs. Whether or not this is standard practice - the depiction of those who were first on earth being amongst the last in hell - it is clear that the young Enrico Dandolo would have grown up having seen the images, at a time long after their creation when the kings and queens were iconographically no longer generic, but very much specific images of the eastern rulers. If the kings and queens of the east were in hell being tormented in the flames, it made the justification of the post-Zara movements of the fourth crusade much easier in the minds of those trying to justify them.



Before setting off back to the vaporetto, we were surprised to have walked past a Braille map of the lagoon. Neither of us had seen a map done in Braille before. The shallows and land and water all had different tactile hatching, with a key in the bottom right. You learn something new every day.

More bread

Marky Mark's original recipe calls for 500g flour, one sachet of yeast, one coke-can of water or milk or mixture of the two and I add some oil as well. What I do is 400g of mixed maizeflour / wheatflour, 100g quaker oats and all the rest as per Marky's advice.

On the left we have the dough rising after the first knead, then cooking and on the right the final loaves. I love home made bread. I love the yeasty smell and the whole house filling with bread smell as the cooking draws to a close. I love the taming of the fungus. It lives and dies so as to make more of the dough.

We got the two loaves I made today here. Left picture is immediately after kneading, middle picture is after the dough has risen as far as it will go and the right hand side is the final cooked product. The top has the TE sign from Linear A/B inscribed - my initial but also a good shape for getting the crust to separate. The bottom loaf was not very well put together and opened up in the final rising stage - not a problem for the final product though. I have tried it and it's great!

Andritsa Cave, Fateful Refuge

Went to the exhibition at the weekend. The write-up is on the caving blog - follow the link in the title...

Green fingers

In between Bitola and Ochrid one finds the village of Bucovo. Bucovo is famous for its pepper mills. Back in October 2003, on my way back to Thessaloniki and somewhere outside Kavadarci we stopped by the side of the road and purchased some of the local produce - a huge bag of milled bucovo pepper and two meters of dried peppers on a string.

The Bucovo milled pepper is still being used slowly and little by little. Some of those two meters of peppers on a string were used but at some point all that remained had become so grimy from sitting around in the kitchen and the time had come to throw them.

Rather than let them go without a fight, I took some seeds from the dried peppers and put them in cotton wool in a yoghurt pot. I did this at the beginning of September, knowing this is the wrong season but fully prepared to move any plants indoors during the winter for their protection. Within a few weeks there was a forest of sprouts in the yoghurt pot and I moved the whole cotton plus shoots assemblage into a proper flower pot with soil. This happened a few days before the accident which incapacitated me.

Every other day or so, Korinna would bring in the plants for me to have a look at them. They were growing, all stuck together in a clump the poor things and I was bedridden and couldn't transplant them. Out of the large number of seeds which I soaked in the cotton, it feels as if they all germinated - or that the non-germinators were w very small percentage of the total.

Time passed and one thing led to another - I still had not transplanted the shoots which were now at the stage of development where they want to get a second pair of leaves out. Some of them still had the seed sticking together the original pair of leaves - which was interesting.

Last week (weekend 3-4 December) I brought some flower pots and soil home from the place near work. First step was to remove the shoots from their flower pot and separate them without tearing the root systems of individual shoots to the extent that this was possible. Next I planted about four or five of the strongest shoots into each of the four flower pots I had bought and patted them in. Next, seeing as there were about that many shoots left again, I put about ten each into the flower pot currently housing the avocado and the olive tree. Obviously the ones in the avocado and olive tree pots will not be brought in if the winter gets too cold for them.

They have been out of their original pot for a whole week now and seem to be thriving. Fingers crossed for some nice and spicy food come the spring!






Here they are, one week on… the top photo is the same shot as the double pot in the earlier shot. The other two are the guy in the avocado pot and the olive pot respectively.

Chasing shadows

On the 29th of March 2006, there will be a total solar eclipse visible from Africa and Asia. It belongs to Saros cycle 139, which is really a useless piece of information to all but the most determined trivia collectors.

I had an opportunity to go up to Rimnicu Vilcea in August 1999 for the eclipse, but didn't take it up, being satisfied instead with a piece of welder's glass and a partial eclipse of about 70% in central Athens.

The last total solar eclipse visible from Greek soil was in 1936. At that time, the parts of Greece from which the 2006 total solar eclipse will be visible were not yet part of Greece but under the control of Fascist Italy. The islands in question were handed over with the rest of the Dodecanese in 1948 as part of the reparations after the second world war.

The plan is to go to Megisti / Kastelorizo to sit under the moon's shadow for the first time in my life.

In the map below, the higher red line is the northern limit of the eclipse, the lower one is the central line. Megisti should get about 3 full minutes of totality.

The problem, of course is the "unproductive line" element of the whole thing. There is, not surprisingly, no direct connection to Athens from Megisti for the island's 275 inhabitants. There are no regular boats, and the plane goes via Rhodes. All this coupled with the fact that the eclipse is on a Wednesday means that we have to go out for more than just a few days.

More news and updates as the situation changes and becomes clearer.

Voight-Kampff

Or how the tidying process reinforces our humanity...

One of the benefits of tidying is that various things come to the surface - memories usually, but often also tangible things connected to them. We opened a box while preparing for the party which revealed, amongst others, a video tape of a recording I had made off the TV about twenty years ago.

It was a film I had not seen for close to ten years, maybe more. The recording had been made in the mid eighties, off ITV, complete with advertisements for cars that look ancient and everything else that was being sold in the 80s.

I hadn't realised that there had been a whole discussion of the "is Decker a replicant?" issue. At some point, I caught wind of it, but I don't think I had seen the film since hearing about it, which made last night's viewing all the more interesting. The film stands up very well today. It was odd seeing it again now, knowing too that along with everyone else who is most definitely dying soon for whatever reason, I am too. That is for another day's discussion, though.

Tidying brings to the front the tangible reminders of our past existence. The role of the black and white photographs on Decker's piano is played for me by more than 30 cubic feet of packing boxes still waiting to be removed from their party-time hiding places and sorted. Do I need them? I don't know.

The party seems to have gone really rather well

The tidying process was slow and emotional. Tidying always is. We decided that we would only go ahead with the full whack party if we could show by the Monday before that the room would be ready and OK for Saturday.

At some point on Saturday - a week before the party we were looking like this:







Mess and gunk and boxed chaos, everywhere. Very little space in which to hold a cocktail and chat.









By the next day, things were looking better, with more floor visible and more boxes although still sitting in the room menacingly, now empty. You can see a set of jugs and stuff on the bookcase now, a trip down memory lane… some of the very first ceramics I made. The number of school books and youngsters toys that I unearthed that weekend was actually quite annoying. Why had I never thrown any of this shit out before??









By Thursday before the Party - late at night, like about 3am, we had managed to get everything open right up to the balcony. We even opened the balcony for the first time in almost two years - a mistake as it turns out as we had water coming in and trying to attack vintage copies of 2000AD magazine (featuring Judge Dredd!). Fortunately, nothing was damaged.









Friday night, we had the shag pile rug down and everything clean and ready to rock. A ridiculous amount of work went into this. There is still a great amount of rubbish in boxes hidden away in other parts of the house now.









And here we are in sunlight conditions…

In the other room, we had laid out the shag pile rug from Wednesday. This had come all the way from Romania for a ridiculously small amount.









And so Saturday morning - we woke and looked into what we would be serving everyone and how all that would work out.

Fight or flight reflex

Increased heart rates and the fight or flight reflex… why?

I guess better that these physiological reminders keep cropping up than we forget that there is a different path that could be trodden.

Trapped

Trapped - trapped by our consumer-frenzy lifestyle which cannot do without the credit card-fueled trappings of urban life. Trapped by the uncertainties inherent in dropping out of the system. Not so much trapped by what society would say - no longer quite so concerned about the name and fame.

I get the knot in the stomach whenever I think about these things - the knot which is two steps away from watery eyes. It is not fair. Oh no. The Floyd, or more precisely, Waters talks about being "shown how to feel good and told to feel bad".

I drive myself totally mentally motionless with the rushing around of the ever decreasing spiral of thoughts - I want to get out of this lifestyle, but if I do, how the hell am I going to pay for the feeding and clothing of children (let alone their schooling and what have you)? I want a new car: where the fuck are the payments going to come from if I quit the life?

Unlimited wants and limited resources - every economist's bread and butter.

Except that my wants are not unreasonably unlimited. At least I don't think they are.

Party - woo!

Saturday night (feast day of St. Stylianos) I am having friends around. It is really quite exciting going through cook books to find canapes and what not.

It's been quite exciting going through all my junk in the dining room to get space opened out for the party.



I haven't had a party for more than five or six years. Very excited.

Anniversary of 17th November 1973

There's nothing like the anniversary of a public uprising to bring the revolutionary songs to radio for a day. I just don't see why this year they are interspersed with James Blunt's "You're Beautiful".

Oh well.

At least the rain should keep the anarchists off the road a little.

Goodbye, my friend

We all went to the third in Nikaia to say our farewells to Kostas yesterday. Kostas left us on Monday night to go exploring in the place we can't follow.

This struck a chord: groupie: A little bit of planning... And a lot of greed

Full text here: I keep thinking it'll be their loss in the long run, when I leave because I just can't stand the pace any longer. But then I worry whether I will ever leave, and whether me leaving will improve things for me...

I have often felt this way groupie - I don't know who you are, just stumbled across your blog some days ago. Your provider does not let people outside comment on your posts otherwise this would be up on your blog, lass. Anyway - I have often felt this way like I said. Never did manage to summon the mental strength required to leave. I took the easy way out: I just don't care any more and try to get by without dying of boredom, you know? Will leaving give me a more fulfilling life? Possibly. There will be more to write about this whole thing - tonight is my last night before going back there for the first time in six weeks. I have spent only three of the last twelve weeks at the office what with holidays and injury and still I have no appetite to go back there and listen to all the bullshit which just turns me off the work I do. I work in a service industry and it annoys me when the bottom line is more important than the service offered - you see this so often. I try to make my work as good as it can be for the client and then I hear or see things which annoy me.

Anyway - groupie, you are not alone... but then again, I think you know that already.

Physio not painless

So there I was, with my foot in a tub with whirly water whooshing round. Why? Well, physiotherapy they call it. And I need it because my ankle is still heavy with swelling even a month after the event. For what happened, you'll have to check the caving blog, which I hope to have up to date soon enough.

I am still in a fair amount of pain, although it is very manageable and serving more as a reminder than a warning to desist. I cannot walk yet. It is tough with friends, family and work not understanding exactly how hard a sprain this was. The physio identified the damage done based on what he felt, what I told him about the circumstances of the fall and how it all felt.

I have until 4 November officially off work. Hopefully by then I'll be in a position to drive and walk and On 28 October and for a few days we have the Panhellenic Speleological Meeting in Kardhitsa Prefecture - it is to be the largest meeting and the first with official representation from foreign clubs.

I have nothing to say about the lost Turkey.

Nor about how they are breaking my balls with advertisements for toys every evening.

Venice Jan 2005 - Part II

We walked around the square to get our bearings and to allow the admittedly small queue for St. Mark's to become smaller. I was disappointed by the no-photography rule inside, especially given that this was one of the reasons I was here. I have photographs of mosaic work from Sicily, Greece and Turkey where no one forbids it. Now I had come on what was essentially a mosaic holiday and faced "no photography" signs. This was a bit down heartening. OK - if I cannot take pictures, St. Mark's still has one thing to offer me: atmosphere.

St. Mark's is meant to have been constructed on the same size and plans as the Church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople. This was another of Justinian's exercises in supersizing Constantine's churches. While we can still see three of Justinian's churches in Istanbul today, the Church of the Holy Apostles fell into disrepair and was already in ruins at the time of the fall. It was taken apart and used as spolia by the Ottomans for their Fatih "Conqueror" mosque. There are very few churches of this size and floorplan still around, and now I was getting the opportunity to look inside a church with the floorplan of the Holy Apostles, and with mosaic decoration, which should also give an idea of what Justinian's church was like.

On entering, I was struck by the size and spaciousness, but that was all. What disappointed was the mosaic work. Compared to the works in Constantinople of the same time, or even of Palermo, what I saw in St. Marks left me with a feeling that I had been cheated. The hype was such that when I got there and craned my neck up, I felt unsated. It's not so much the workmanship on the figures themselves so much as the programme - there are great empty spaces of gold ground which would have been so much better filled with vines, tendrils, geometric shapes, and the like. I was not prepared for so much gold ground and unimpressed by it when I saw it. No doubt the Frankish knights of the fourth who came to ask for carriage to Alexandria in the very early thirteenth century were suitably impressed by this show of gold. I wouldn't have made a good Frankish knight.

Speaking of which, we visited both the treasury and the Pala d'Oro, and then the space on the upper floor with the horses and an exhibition on the history of restoration work. The balcony gives an impressive view over the square and across to the Lido. The horses gave mixed emotions, as I wanted to believe that I was in the presence of a Pheidias original, but the exhibition texts talk of first or second century creations. We will never know. These horses in front of me are those same ones which Porphyrius the charioteer and Theodora's father raced around when they sat on the spina. No doubt some of the Nika rioters would have died with these horses as the last thing they saw, while being charged down by the horses of Belissarius' cavalry. Noise - the statues lived surrounded by noise in the mother of cities, and now they had the quiet of St. Mark's and the hushed voices of the passing tourists to keep them company.






I have highlighted a little original building-work peeping through here in the side of St. Marks.



Leaving the cathedral, we picked up our bags which we had been asked to leave just off the little square of the lions. We began a westwardly stroll without any destination in particular, intending to reach at some point the Rialto Bridge. We passed many art exhibitions which seemed ridiculously overpriced to us, especially the Turner whose works one does not pay for in London. I am not sure which way we went and how we eventually go to the Rialto Bridge, but we ate at a restaurant near the theater on the way, called al Teatro, which was decent enough, without being something overwhelmingly special. There were building works going on nearby which started up with their pneumatic whatsits soon after we started eating and the staff were very apologetic, despite it not being their fault at all.

The Rialto Bridge area was very busy with tourists and locals alike. I was fascinated by the mareometer on the main vaporetto stop which barometer-like recorded the height of the sea throughout the day. I had read about the flooding and read the posters outside St. Zacharia showing flooded Venice, but since all the days we were there the water seemed to be quite low, nothing drove it home more than the mareometer, except perhaps the "moss-line" visible all over the town about half a yard above the sea level. This is a green line on every wall in the city above which the wall is normal, and below which grow mossy sorts of plants which give the impression of the sort of plants which need to be in water to survive.

It was here at the Rialto area that I decided to talk to one of the gondoliers as we were still debating with Korinna whether or not to take one of the 60 Euro rides.

I wanted to find out a bit about the Befana Regatta which ended at the Rialto - like what time it starts and where a good place to watch would be. The gondolier was a glum fellow and gave us the information I asked for grudgingly. I don't know whether this was because he realized we were not going to ask for a boat trip, or whether it was his nature to be a glum and grudging source of information about local customs to tourists. We did not take a gondola ride.

We walked about town after dusk and nightfall and stopped at a café which really did seem to be patronized by the locals. They had the Eraclea Antiqua brand hot chocolate, to which we are both very partial and we sat reading here until we decided to get on a boat back to the Lido. We did the Grand Canal by night this time, having walked up a little distance in the day and returned to the hotel.

We had supper in a pizzeria up the central perpendicular street which starts at the vaporetto stop. The pizzeria happened to be almost full of an American school group, but the pizza was good enough.

Venice - Jan 2005 Part I

And so it was that following bookings made at hotels in the Lido and a little outside Ravenna, and with the Blue Guide to both Venice and Northern Italy firmly in hand we set off on the evening of 2 January for Patras in my ageing Fiat Cinquecento. The trip was a surprise. Korinna did not know where we were going, just that a passport would be useful. Since we had been before to Ochrid and I travel frequently to Turkey, there was no way she would guess until well past Corinth and almost right up to the boat that the destination would be across the sea to the ungrateful matricide daughter of the Eastern Roman Empire.

In the end the passports were not needed for the crossing, nor was my green card for the car requested by anyone. We had 31 hours in the boat and I spent the time reading up a little on the destination. Fortunately it is possible to sleep for much of the 31 hours without having to alter your normal patterns. The boat sets off at about midnight and arrives at about seven or eight in the morning.

The arrival time was planned to be at about seven local time, and I learned that this is arrival at the entrance to the lagoon, not actual disembarkation time, so we had an opportunity for breakfast in the ship's canteen as we entered the lagoon. By the time we were passing the Doge's palace and St. Zacharia stop, the twilight had become bright enough to see Venice passing gently before us. They say that Venice should be approached by sea to appreciate the city - I have no recollection of approaching it any other way, so I'll just say that the approach by sea is special enough for me not to want to arrive any other way if I have the opportunity to go again. They say the same about Istanbul as well. I will have to wait and see about this.





By the time we had moored, the sun was up and colouring the lagoon and the city in a golden glow which was increasingly beautiful as we disembarked and made our way to the ferry service for the Lido. We got a three day pass, plus a return trip to the Lido for the car and went back past St. Zacharia and St. Mark's with the sun shining onto them from the sea. The three day pass allowed great freedom of movement and a carefree attitude to direction taking - it did not matter to be on the wrong boat, because not only would we see something unexpected, but we would not need to pay to come back. It also came out quite economical as the cost was less than individual trips to the three outlying islands which we made.

On the Lido, we stayed at the hotel Giardinetto, which is very central on the Lido, twenty yards or so from the vaporetto stop for St. Mark's and decently priced. We did not have a view of the lagoon, but some rooms in the hotel do. We took the car to the Hotel Park, a few km to the south which has an agreement with the Giardinetto and left the car there for the next three days. Coming back on the bus - ferry pass is good for travel on the buses too - we set off straight for St. Mark's arriving at about ten am. Amazed at this uncharacteristic efficiency in actually getting from A to B I was pleased that we had a great number of hours of sunlight left for walking around.

The plan was to see as much of Venice on this first day as possible, see Torcello on the second day as a day trip, and to see anything else in Venice which took our fancy on the third day, after watching the Befana Regatta.

We walked past from the St. Zacharia stop to St. Mark's square, past the hordes trying to look at the bridge of sighs, which were a little bit of a turn-off. I very much enjoyed the sculptured capitals on the columns of the Ducal Palace. They were something unexpected, and I have no idea when they were carved. Within no time at all, we were face to face with the tetrarchs, staring out of their new perch in all their porphyrean glory. It was moving to finally stand next to and dare I say it, touch this sculpture which was in my Latin books at school and about which I have read so much since school, and there they were. We asked a passer-by to take the canonical shot of us embracing like tetrarchs in front of the tetrarchs, but the passer-by cropped it in a way which shows that the visual echo was more a duck's quack than a fully-fledged yodel.





To be continued...

Bird flu

I'm alright, I'm a bloke.

But seriously, it's here - allegedly. If the news is to be believed we got bird flu on this side of the border now. Some Turkey's been found dead with it on an island.

I ain't had my flu jab yet and there's been mass illiterate panic buying by people who think one will protect you from the other. Bollocks bollocks bollocks - I'm in the high risk group idiots. Not only that but I know that the jab won't cover this year's flus but last year's.

The news channels are all blowing things out of proportion - I have no idea what is being said about the bird flu outside Greece, but here there is mass media-induced hysteria. The media thrive on lack of knowledge and fear thrashing the public into a greater state of fear and panic. And then there is no flu vaccine for me.

Ignorance is bliss buy consume spend panic suckers!